Tagged PDFs

[Rob Beezer]

On 12/3/24 13:04, on pretext-support, Joseph DiMuro wrote:
> Wait. Accessible PDFs with LaTeX? It was a surprise to me when I found out, but
> yes, apparently that's doable now. From the LaTeX project website:
>
>
https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/documentation/prototype-usage-instructions.html

I'd like to try out some of these suggestions, as a way of keeping abreast of
what this project is doing.

BUT, I doubt my LaTeX is new enough, and I'm leery of having an alternate
installation (or provisioning a VM).

I could slowly add features, hidden by a "stringparam" that enables them. So
nothing would be different for most people, I'd just need to stay out of Oscar's
way while he (massively) refactors LaTeX output.

@Joseph - if I did some work in this direction, would you be interested in
building PDFs and evaluating them for accessibility? Maybe there are some
automated tools?

It'd sort of be a slow burn - working through that page of instructions a
baby-step at a time as I can get to it. But I do need a new project to distract
me from the projects I already have going. ;-) Getting the strinparam in place
on your end is a simple one-time exercise, and maybe once we do a few steps,
you'll see how to do more.

I think this is in our future, no matter what, so we might as well start now...

Rob

[Joseph DiMuro]

Hi Rob. I have some good news for you. Five days ago, I got Adobe Acrobat Pro installed on my office computer; my university approved a license for me. And my university also provides training on how to use it to check PDFs for accessibility (I'm partway through the training already). So yes, I would very much like to chip in here. Give me LaTeX files, and I'll compile them (perhaps on Overleaf, which I've done before) and check them for accessibility.

-Joseph

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[Rob Beezer]

On 12/11/24 10:49, Joseph DiMuro wrote:
> Hi Rob. I have some good news for you. Five days ago, I got Adobe Acrobat Pro
> installed on my office computer; my university approved a license for me. And my
> university also provides training on how to use it to check PDFs for
> accessibility (I'm partway through the training already). So yes, I would very
> much like to chip in here.

That *is* very good news. I believe Adobe has been funding some of the LaTeX
work. And you will be an expert. ;-)

> Give me LaTeX files, and I'll compile them (perhaps
> on Overleaf, which I've done before) and check them for accessibility.

Do you think we can get you going with the CLI (nightlies) and string
parameters, which would allow you to experiment without as much back-and-forth?
Not this second, I'll need to decide on a string parameter and get a first test
going.

Rob

[Joseph DiMuro]

About the CLI nightlies and such: could be. I've been avoiding updating the PreTeXt CLI because of the single-page HTML stuff, which I need for my syllabi. An older version of the CLI works better for me there. That issue goes away if I can make accessible PDFs, but there's also this: I use MiKTeX on my computer, and it looks like the last version of MiKTeX predates these new accessibility features. So I'd need to reach for TeX Live.

Or is this something that could be done using the GitHub Codespaces stuff? Forgive my ignorance here; I've used those Codespaces before, but I'm so used to doing things on my own computer.

I give final exams on Monday, and I haven't written them yet. :-/ I'll be busy until then, but my schedule will open up after that.

-Joseph

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[Rob Beezer]

Shipping LaTeX source can work well also. We can start there.

Something to consider is a Python virtual environment for experimenting. "git
pull" would have you at the most very recent, and maybe you would only need the
"lxml" package to get LaTeX you could process with whatever.

No urgency around any of this. For you, or for me. I know it is a busy time of
the academic calendar.

Rob

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[Oscar Levin]

Just FYI, you can definitely use a codespace for trying out the nightly builds.  However, I have no idea what version of texlivs Debian bookworm ships with, which is what you would get for latex.

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[Michael Cantino]

If someone manages to generate one of these accessible PDFs, can you please send me a copy? I’m curious to see what the speech and braille output looks like with a screen reader.

Michael Cantino

On Dec 11, 2024, at 2:11 PM, Oscar Levin <oscar...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Mitch Keller]

Check out https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/documentation/prototype-usage-instructions.html, which will let you generate tagged PDF from their example files by clicking a button in your browser. You should then be able to download the PDF and explore it. I am not good at using VoiceOver on macOS, but its ability to navigate the matrix in the "MathML Structure Element Tagging” section seemed suspect at best.

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-- 
Mitch Keller
mi...@rellek.net

http://www.rellek.net/

[Michael Cantino]

I had a minute to take a quick pass at this. I don't know if I'm missing something. I generated PDFs from the last 2 examples on the page, and I used JAWS 2024 to read the PDFs in Firefox and in Adobe Acrobat (Pro). I guess I see why they're saying the math is "accessible". I would never hand this off to a student and tell them it's accessible. 

There is a slight difference when I read the "Math tagged with Associated Files (PdfTeX)" PDF. Typically, when I read math content in a PDF with a screen reader, the numerals and some basic operators are recognized by the screen reader, but everything else is shown as a "full cell" in braille because it doesn't know what to display. 

When I read the "Math tagged with MathML Structure Elements" PDF, it behaves like a typical PDF. All of the variables are shown as full cells in braille.

When I read the "Math tagged with Associated Files (PdfTeX)" PDF, JAWS is able to transcribe the variables, but I'm not getting the Nemeth translation that I would typically get when reading MathML. Everything is transcribed in UEB, and not entirely correctly. No superscript indicator. The matrix is a bit of a mess, but that's not really a surprise. 

We'd still be way better off reading this content in a Word document or on a web page. 

Michael Cantino

[Joseph DiMuro]

Hi Michael. Thanks for looking into this. This makes me wonder whether the issue is in JAWS or in the PDFs themselves. :-/

Two questions for you, Michael:

1. Any complaints here besides the mathematics? I'm hoping to be able to tell my LaTeX-loving colleagues that they can use this to make accessible syllabi and CVs, and perhaps we can figure out the math issues later.
2. I take it that these issues don't arise when using a comparable Word document? I really don't like having arguments in favor of using Word. :-/

-Joseph

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[Michael Cantino]

Hi Joseph,

I'd say I'm 99% sure that this is an issue with the PDFs and not with JAWS. JAWS is really great at reading math in pretty much any other environment. 

I didn't really dig into the accessibility details of these PDFs, but in general, properly authored PDFs don't really pose accessibility issues, unless you try to include math in your PDF. That's probably PDF's biggest shortcoming. That, and from an accessibility standpoint, PDFs are kind of a pain to remediate if the accessibility features were not properly authored in the original source file. If you're not including math in your PDFs, then you can produce accessible PDFs without using this particular tool.

The limitations with math content don't occur in Word, or in many other environments. HTML is great. EPUB works fine. PDFs are just particularly bad for math. 

Michael

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[Joseph DiMuro]

All duly noted, Michael. I've always been under the (apparently mistaken) impression that Word is also a bad environment for accessibility of math. Now I'm in the mood to experiment a little bit and see for myself.

If only I didn't have final exams to deal with right now... :-)

-Joseph

[Michael Cantino]

Math in Word has a bit of a mixed history. Word has long been a good format for reading math, but we needed to produce MathML with a tool other than the Microsoft Equation Editor in order for the math to be accessible. Most people were using MathType or Scientific Notebook. Microsoft has since patched up their equation editor so that expressions created with that tool can be read by a screen reader. I think MathType still produces slightly cleaner output in braille, but the Word equation editor works pretty well now. 

I'm not really up to speed on using LaTeX in Word though. Braille and assistive technology is more in my wheelhouse. I think I've typically seen LaTeX converted to MathML, using something like MathType, in the past, but others on this list would have a better understanding of how to effectively us LaTeX in Word.

Word has been a staple for blind users for a long time, and it's really common for screen reader users to request things in a Word format. That said, HTML is arguably better. With Word, we can run into different issues depending on the version of Word being used by the reader or the author. HTML is much more consistent.

Michael

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